Archive | May, 2011

(PTI) In yet another major reshuffle of top Tamil Nadu officials,the AIADMK government tonight transferred 21 Collectors, important among them being Coimbatore Collector P Umanath, who will be Joint Secretary, Finance Department.

He will replace D Karthikeyan, who has already been transferred, an official press release said here tonight.

It said Seetharaman, Cuddalore Collector would now hold the post of Project Director, Post Tsunami sustainable livelihood programme, while Dindigul Collector M Vallalar will be the Additional Commissioner of Industries and Commerce.

Erode Collector C Kamaraj will now be Deputy Secretary, Transport Department, while Rajendra Ratnoo, Kanyakumari Collector will be the Joint Secretary, Department of Special Programme Implementation.

(PTI) The trial of Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Husssain Rana, which led to several revelations of nexus between ISI and LeT in carrying out the Mumbai terror attacks, is all set to resume here with the testimony of co-conspirator David Coleman Headley.

In perhaps the most important terrorism trial ever to be held here, it is still expected that some new information regarding the nexus between al-Qaeda, ISI and LeT might emerge.

As the trial, which began last week, more links between ISI and LeT are emerging with Headley narrating his side of the story that he started straying away from the so-called “ISI Jihad” with Major Iqbal and Sajid Mir toward a more “holy jihad” with Pasha or Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired major from the Pakistani Army, who connected Headley with al-Qaeda leader Ilyas Kashmiri.

(AFP) UN chief Ban Ki-moon has welcomed the agreement by Nepal’s political leaders to give parliament a three-month reprieve to complete its work on a new constitution.

The secretary general also praised “the reaffirmation of their commitment to complete the basic tasks of the peace process, particularly the integration and rehabilitation of the Maoist Army personnel,” his spokesman Martin Nesirky said.

The agreement came after days of negotiations over the future of Nepal’s 601-member parliament, or Constituent Assembly.

The assembly was elected in 2008 after a decade of civil war with a two-year mandate to write a new national constitution and oversee the peace process that began when the conflict ended in 2006.

(AFP) President Hamid Karzai scolded the US military for “arbitrary and unnecessary” missions that kill Afghan civilians, saying it was his last warning on the issue after 14 died in an air strike.

Citing initial reports that 10 children, two women and two men were killed in a strike in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday, Karzai said such operations amounted to the “murdering of Afghanistan’s children and women.”

Local authorities said US Marines called in air support after their base in the Nawzad district of Helmand came under attack from small arms fire.

“During the air strike, two civilian houses were targeted which killed 14 civilians and six others were wounded,” the provincial administration said in a statement, citing the deaths of five girls, seven boys and two women.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it was investigating the allegations.

(PTI) Packets of tobacco products will have to carry new harsher pictorial warnings from December 1 as the government today came out with separate sets of gory graphics of cancer-affected lungs and mouth for smoking and smokeless forms of tobacco.

The warnings will be rotated every two years instead of the existing duration of one year, apparently in keeping with a demand from the tobacco industry.

The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has issued a gazette notification on new pictorial warnings, which have come after prolonged delay. There are two existing warnings like scorpion and damaged lungs for cigarettes while a stricter one was to be depicted from December one, 2010.

This was also for the first time that separate harsher pictorial warnings have been designated for smokeless tobacco like gutka.

(PTI) The global epicentre of terrorism is in India’s immediate western neighbourhood and the vast infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan has for long flourished as an instrument of state policy, Home Minister P Chidambaram today said.

Calling for stronger Indo-US ties to combat terrorism and other threats, Chidambaram stressed on the need for a “stable, peaceful and prosperous neighbourhood” for the security of the people of India.

“It is a truism to say that India lives in perhaps the most difficult neighbourhood in the world. The global epicentre of terrorism is in our immediate western neighbourhood.

“The vast infrastructure of terrorism in Pakistan has for long flourished as an instrument of state policy,” he said in his opening remarks at India-US Homeland Security Dialogue being held here.

(PTI) At least six Air India flights were cancelled today as the airline prepared a contingency plan to meet a fuel shortage after three state-owned oil firms refused to supply jet fuel till it paid off its mounting dues.

Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, which had put the ailing carrier on notice to get its daily fuel on cash-and- carry sales model in December last, sent a notice asking it to pay the debts which have risen due to the recent spate of increase in the price of aviation turbine fuel (ATF).

At least six flights, mostly from Thiruvananthapuram, were cancelled due to fuel shortage, airline officials said.

They said crew on all international flights have been asked to buy extra fuel while returning home. The airline operates nearly 320 flights on domestic and international sectors daily.

(PTI) Apparently gloating over the mayhem the Pakistani attackers were creating in Mumbai, Tahawwur Rana, a co-accused had proposed that nine of the ten LeT militants who carried out the carnage should be decorated with Pakistan’s highest military award, Nishan-e-Haider.

This was stated by David Headley, another prime accused in the Mumbai case in his testimony before the Chicago district court on the third day of the trial of his childhood friend, Rana, a Pakistani Canadian.

Headley said that Rana had told him that nine of the ten Mumbai attackers who died should be given Nishan-e-Haider.

The sole exception being Ajmal Kasab, who had been captured by Indian security forces.

Rana, Headley said had also praised Sajid Mir, his Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) handler for the attack on the Chhahbad House calling him Khalid bin Walid, one of the greatest Generals in Islamic history.

(PTI) The Delhi Police today said the explosion outside the Delhi High Court was not aimed at creating any major damage and the motive behind the incident was being probed.

Delhi Police Commissioner B K Gupta, who handed over a report of preliminary investigation to Union Home Minister P Chidambaram on yesterday’s explosion, said as per the initial reports, the bomb was not aimed at causing major damage.

While awaiting for the CFSL report, the police chief said that “it was a low intensity and mild blast” and “that’s why even the car under which it was placed, was not damaged much”.

“Our best investigators — our special branch and crime branch — are conducting the inquiry,” he said.